by Wilson, Tia
“He thinks his father was a weak man, someone who didn't see the bigger picture of what you were doing for the clan as we move forward in this time of instability. He is fully on board with the cause, zealous doesn't even begin to describe him. I think he feels like he has to redeem the family name after his father brought shame to his clan,” Slattery said.
“Wise boy,” Tulimak said picking at his teeth with a toothpick. “And the other?”
“A young girl, strong-willed, independent, a little reckless at times. She is a natural leader, the other recruits seem to have nothing but respect for her,” Slattery said.
“How did she manage that,” Tulimak asked flicking the toothpick into the bloodstained fighting pit.
“During her first week of training, two of the other recruits, thick headed grunts in the making would not let up on her about her lack of family. She was found abandoned in the woods sixteen years ago by one of our border scouts and given to a barren woman as a surrogate. These two kept giving her grief about her lowly status in the clan, how she was nothing without family. They were starting to get increasingly physical with her. Pushing her in the lunch queue. Knocking her tray out of her hand, that sort of thing. One day she turned around and leapt on one of the boys. Bent his arm back until it snapped at the elbow. She did it in front of the whole mess hall. While he lay on the floor pumping blood and white as a ghost with a huge sliver of bone sticking through his skin, she jumped up and knocked the other guy to the ground. She ripped his left eye out and was about to tear his throat wide open. She was pulled off him by some of the advisors before she did anymore damage. It took three of them to wrestle her away from him. They threw her into a cell for three days to cool off,” Slattery said.
“Did she turn during this bit of spirited play?” Tulimak asked smiling, his incisor teeth extending over his top lip.
“Barely. Her eyes shifted and that was it,” Slattery said.
“Impressive control for such a young fighter. Send them both up to my office tomorrow I want to check them out. I may have some work coming up that they would be perfect for,” Tulimak said heading across the walkway towards his raised office. Slattery followed behind him writing notes in his pad. “Prepare the pits for tonight. I need to release some pent up energy. I can feel something in the air, a change in pressure, a scent I cant fully make out. Change is coming Slattery my old friend and I want to be ready when it shows its yellow teeth and black fur. We are about to enter a new age of dominance for the white bear clan. I can feel it. My time is now,” he said turning to look Slattery in the eye, “I never needed my father. Him scurrying off into the woods was the best thing to ever happen to our clan. He was too stuck in the old ways. He couldn't see the mistakes we were making again and again. The old man was getting soft, allowing the black bears to get too close to the borders of our territory,” Tulimak said and laughed. “And his ideas about a peaceful union? Can you imagine Slattery making any kind of deal with the black bears, those savages eat their young. Peace is a fools dream,” Tulimak said and closed his office door behind him leaving Slattery standing on the walkway still taking notes.
CHAPTER NINE
The Pit Awaits
Lewis was doing push ups when he heard the metal door at the end of the corridor being pushed open. He continued his exercises and focused on the yellow straw underneath him as he counted off each one. Someones boots scuffed on the floor outside the cell and he continued his exertions.
“Good to see you keeping fit,” Slattery said.
Lewis ignored him and finished his one-hundredth push up before he got up and faced the man. Slattery was flanked by two armed guards both pointing snub nosed machine guns in Lewis’s direction.
“Its show time,” Slattery said in deadpan. “Get back against the wall, hands on your head. You know the drill.”
The guards entered the cell, one staying in the corner with the gun trained on Lewis. While the other approached from behind. What if I rush this guy and try to wrestle the gun from his hand Lewis thought. These thoughts always entered his mind right before he was cuffed, he was like a man standing on the edge of a bridge who was afraid that some ancient gnarled part of his brain would spring into action and cause him to leap to his doom. Lewis was cuffed and chained at his ankles and escorted out of his cell in jerking shuffling steps. He glanced into Phil’s cell as he passed and all he saw was a slumped figure in the corner of the room with a rough woollen blanket covering him.
“Is he ok?” Tom said tilting his head in Phil’s direction.
“Not your concern,” Slattery said.
Slattery slid the metal door back and walked out onto a metal platform. Embedded in the hand rails where yellow lights at intervals giving the impression of a runway stretching off into the distance. Lewis walked forward and the guards behind him closed the door, the metal clang echoing around them. Lewis looked over the side of the handrail and could see nothing but darkness, up above was the same. We could be hundreds of feet up and I wouldn’t know it he thought to himself.
Slattery motioned for him to stop. A light came on overhead and illuminated a circular concrete pit below the walkway. The floor of the pit was raked sand and one metal door was embedded in the wall and connected to a covered passageway. The noise of gears whirring came from up above and Lewis looked up into the gloom to try to see what was happening. He could make out a system of rails cross back and forth into the darkness. Sliding on the track directly above the walkway was a metal hook attached to a pulley. It stopped above Slattery and lowered to his should height.
“Who am I fighting?” Lewis asked.
“Raise your arms over you head,” Slattery ordered him.
Lewis glanced behind him and one guard was kneeling with the other behind him. Both had their guns pointed at his chest. Slattery attached the hook to Lewis’s wrist handcuffs and the hook retracted into the ceiling above. Lewis stood on his tip toes until he was raised off the ground, his wrists and arms straining with the weight of his body. The hook moved away from the walkway and he was hanging over the pit below. Slattery reached out and unchained his legs. I could kick him right in the face and probably break his jaw Lewis thought. That would do you know good he reasoned with himself, he would be left hanging up like a pig to the slaughter ready to be shot at by the guards.
He was lowered to the sandy floor of the pit and the hook retracted and unhooked from his wrist cuffs. He stood there rubbing his wrists looking up at the walkway above. The three people above him where hidden in deep shadow..
“Uncuff yourself. The key is stuck on the side of the hook,” Slattery said.
Lewis reached up to the hook and spun it around. On the opposite side was a key held magnetically to the flat surface of the hooks head. He took them off and stood staring into the light.
“Place the key and the cuffs on the hook,” Slattery said.
Lewis held them up to the hook and they pulled out of his fingers with a snap as the magnet pulled them forward. A motor whirred in the ceiling above and the hook retracted up into the dark. The men on the platform above walked away and off in the distance Lewis heard another heavy metal door slamming shut. The strip of light bisecting his view went off and the walkway disappeared into oppressive dark. A single light hung above the pit illuminating it. The walls were smooth grey concrete at least twenty feet tall and the circular pit was the size of a basketball court.
Lewis stood and listened to the soft mechanical whirr. He could feel it more in his bones than actually hear it, like the weird scratch sensation of a t.v tuned to static playing in another room. The ground beneath him vibrated gently as if the pit was sitting atop a large piece of machinery chugging away in the depths of the earth.
“Hello,” Lewis shouted as loud as possible. His voice was swallowed up by the surrounding dark and then like a pebble thrown into a pond his voice echoed back to him. What is this place Lewis wondered? When he had been standing on the walkway he had seen at least three more pi
ts like the one he was in all in a row, until he could see no further because of the dim light. Is this some sort of large scale betting operation he thought, a place where multiple fights can be had simultaneously while the people observed and betted from the walkways above. In all his years working the streets and mixing with societies underclass he had never heard of such a place. Sure urban legends were numerous, he had heard tales so far fetched when he was in prison but none about such a large scale underground fighting ring. If this place was as big as he thought, the fights were on an industrial scale with the opportunity for dozens of them to run at the same time. It’s got to be the columbians he thought. They were the only ones with the money and power to pull off something on such a large scale. If he was right he was fucked.
He paced back and forth beating his hands on his chest, flexing his arms and working himself into a frenzy. If his captors wanted a show he was going to give them one. He would rip the head clean off his shoulders as soon as his opponent got in the rings. The veins on his arms popped as he swung his fists, punching and moving in a tight circle. Sand kicked up in sprays as he moved around quickly throwing jabs and right hooks.
He could feel himself slip into the zone as he shadow boxed. It was nearly a zen like state where all outside stimuli faded to the background and he became nothing more than two fists of solid steel ready to pummel someone to death. When he worked himself up to this state it was like he was in a place were pain didn’t really exist, a place were it became nothing but a nagging tug of his body as his fists flew in a blur of punches. You can do this he told himself, no random fighter is going to take you down. Not today, not ever, no one is going to get the drop on you.
He heard a noise coming from behind him and he stood with his fists raised in front of him. The door in the wall ahead of him hissed as it slid sideways into a recess in the wall. A locking mechanism clicked loudly when the door fully retracted.
Beneath the arch cut into the curve concrete doorway stood a small girl no older then eight and frightened looking. Lewis dropped his fists and glanced up at the invisible walkways above. What sick game where his captors playing at he thought. The little girl stepped from the doorway and the door slid shut behind her and locked. She jumped at the noise of the locking clicking home.
The girl was wearing a loose fitting dress with a patter of blue interlinking circles stitched up the side. Her blue eyes were wide and she looked close to tears. The girl held her hands crisscrossed across her body in defence. She had short cropped blonde hair matted to her head with sweat.
Lewis put his hands up and said, “It’s ok you don’t need to be frightened. I’m not going to hurt you.” He took a step towards her and the girl shrunk back from him and pressed her back against the door.
“I’m Lewis. Whats your name?” he asked looking around for any movement on the above walkways. He could see nothing but imagined a row of twisted men watching as events unfolded below them.
“Ariana,” the girl said in a soft whisper.
Lewis backed away from her to show he was a man of his word. When he was at the opposite wall he sat down in the sand to show he was no threat. “Do you know why you are here Ariana?” he asked.
She nodded her head without meeting his eyes. Her shoulders twitched as she leant against the door. The poor girl Lewis thought she is scared out of her mind and being thrown in to this pit with a stranger was freaking her out.
“Why are you doing this you sick fucks?” Lewis shouted up to the unseen people. The girl jumped at his raised voice. “I’m not going to fight a little girl. Let her out of here and face me like a man. Enough of these game.”
The girls shoulders twitched again and her skin was turning a pale ashen colour. Had they drugged her Lewis thought as he got up? The girl looked at him her blue eyes no longer sparkling, instead her eyes were darkening. She pulled back her lips in a pained grimace and fell to the ground and started twitching.
Lewis ran over to her and rolled her over. She was breathing in rapid gasps and her legs and arms twisted and jerked. Is it some sort of seizure Lewis though as he looked at her. She squeezed her eyes shut and her mouth hung open in a wide gape. The skin of her face started to darken spreading out from her cheeks and across her nose and lips. She is choking Lewis thought. He shook the girl gently by the shoulders not knowing what to do. A dank smell came from deep inside like three day old rotten meat. Lewis covered his nose as his eyes began to water from the stench.
The girl let out a growl and then the skin of her face ripped from the corner of her lips to the back of her head. Her jaws hinged back as her teeth started to fall out of her gums. Lewis let go of the girl and scrabbled backwards away from her never taking his eyes from the twitching body. The girls face folded back over her skull like an obscene glove. The front of her skull began to break and protrude as if someone was pushing at it from behind.
Lewis hit the opposite concrete wall and pressed his back against it. His shirt was drenched from a cold sweat pouring off his body.
The girls body twisted and contorted as a noise like branches breaking mixed with the wet tear of flesh being torn apart filled the air. Lewis held his hands up to his ears to block out the sound. I’ll go mad if I hear any more of that hellish sound he thought as he tried to block it out. Blood drenched the sand around the girl and then she seemed to split down the middle. Lewis’s mind tried to jump to an explanation to what he was seeing and he reeled. The body spilt open as something else moved within the mess of broken bones, flesh and steaming internal organs. I am in a nightmare Lewis tried to tell him self as the figure pulled itself onto all four and faced him.
It was bear streaked with blood and chunks of skin hung to the thick white fur of its body. The bear shook itself and a fine mist of blood arched out coating the wall behind him and misting the sand in front. The bear turned to the puddle of blood and broken body parts it had burst forth from and sniffed it.
“What the fuck is this?” Lewis shouted towards the rafters in a shaking voice. The bear turned to him and stood on its hind legs and roared. The roar seemed magnified in the concrete pit and it was a sound that chilled Lewis to the bone. He scrambled to his feet the only thing on his mind now was survival.
The bear stood as tall as Lewis on its hind legs and he could see that it wasn’t fully grown. The bear sniffed the air and looked up towards the walkways above. Lewis took this tiny opportunity and charged at the bear. With his head low he ran full force into the bears chest, it was like hitting a brick wall. The bear fell backwards and Lewis tumbled on top of it. The bear was momentarily stunned and Lewis punched it hard in the jaw. His knuckles cracked painfully as they slammed into the thick skull. He rolled off the bear and away from it and got back on his feet. His knuckles were bleeding and the pain was nothing but a distant tug.
The bear turned over and stood on four legs. It growled at him, a deep bass rumble from deep in its chest. Lewis raised his fists. Am I really going to do this he thought to himself, if he ever got out of this he would have a hell of a story to tell the other inmates.
The bear ran towards him sand flying out from its back paws. His right fist connected with the bears neck. His left fist came around to connect with the side of the bears head and it turned and snapped its jaws shut around his arm. Pain shot up his arm and this time it was more than a background tugging sensation. He pummelled the bear with his right fist as the bear ground his teeth into his arm. It’s going to break Lewis thought and he twisted away and fell to the ground his arm over his head in the bears mouth. The bear dragged him half way across the pit and let him go.
Lewis rolled away from him and held his arm to his chest. Ragged chunks of flesh hung from the forearm and blood bubbled out from several puncture wounds. He looked around wildly for anything to help, any way out of this hell hole. The wall of smooth curved concrete was of no help. I’m going to die in here Lewis thought as the bear charged him again.
The bear reared up and swung a paw at Le
wis who tried to pivot and spin out of its path. The paw connected with his shoulder and flung him back and he hit the wall with a thud. He lay face down in the sand trying to breathe. His mouth was filled with gritty sand and his damaged arm continued to pour blood. If I’m going to die it’s going to be on my feet he thought to himself as he pushed himself off the ground. His back and shoulders screamed in agony as he stood on shaking legs.
The bear was across the other side of the pit watching him rise. It pawed the earth its head swaying from side to side as it looked at him. It knows it has me Lewis thought, it has no reason to rush in for the kill. The bear stood on its hind legs and roared, strings of blood soaked spittle falling to the ground in pink strings.
